Okay, so, as you know, I've come out recently in favor of universal childcare and preK, but at the same time, I feel like in my mind it's much lower on my list of priorities than it is for a lot of people. In some ways I even have ideological reservations about it, which I'll get to later. I feel like centrists are really pushing it hard and often for all the wrong reasons, and I felt like discussing this today.
How childcare used to work
So, as we know, we used to have the nuclear family be the model for childcare in the US. That being, the man goes to work, and the woman stays home and takes care of kids all day. The model was functional, but obviously, it had issues. It was often unfair to women, who were reduced to little more than breeding stock dependent on men to survive. It led to women being trapped in relationships with men who were often the breadwinners, and it discouraged women from taking on jobs themselves if they wanted.
A lot of conservatives complained about liberal policies bringing about the death knell of the nuclear family structure. Divorce leads to single parenthood, single parents end up having to take care of children AND work to support themselves, which is seen as more difficult and less functional. Welfare often broke up families due to being poorly structured and offering perverse incentives (the problem here is the structure of welfare, and its testing of who is deemed "worthy" of aid, not the idea of welfare), and conservatives flipped.
Over time, women started joining the work force more and more, and this leads to questions like who can take care of the kids and how? Obviously we had a "functional" model back then, and it's possible womens' liberation did come with some level of dysfunction, so how do we solve it? Obviously we can't just go back to the oppressive patriarchal nuclear family again, so how do we move forward from here?
Enter the neoliberal feminists
I discuss centrists a lot on this sub, and crap on them a lot, and I will be taking no prisoners here. While the neoliberal feminists mean well in addressing womens' issues, they ultimately do so through this pro work, neoliberal lens. That said, what's their solution? Childcare.
They like women working, but as we can see in the pandemic, and this is why we're so hell bent on reopening schools without resolving said pandemic first, even though it's May and summer is around the corner and kids aren't vaccinated. People don't want to work because they gotta stay home and take care of their kids. School has become a glorified daycare for parents to drop their kids off, and then they go to work. This makes sense from a right wing growth and job maximizing mindset. The man works, now the woman works too, and because there is now demand for childcare, we can now expect a third person to work as a caregiver for children as well. We now have three jobs, and three people getting paychecks. This makes GDP go up and so does productivity! Woo! Think of all the jobs created!
But, paying for daycare is expensive, and is often a privilege available to only wealthy people. So, the democrats want to subsidize childcare to encourage people to work. Oh, and they want universal preK too. PreK acts as a form of daycare, where kids start going to school at age 3 instead of 5, meaning they're out of the hair of the adults all day.
So what's wrong with this?
Well, as you know, I'm anti work. Meaning I want us all to work less, not more. And I think these problems are twofold. First of all, if we used to get by with one adult in a household working, I don't see why we shouldn't go back to one adult in the household working. Call me old fashioned, but I don't see womens' empowerment as coming from wage slavery. The economy has changed in the past 50 years, and a lot of those breadwinner jobs have disappeared from the economy, to be replaced by low wage service sector crap. And now, because most jobs are low wage service sector crap, we need two adults working when we previously only needed one. So now we got families who have to work even harder than they did to stay ahead. It should be noted women in the work force does not decrease wages. The opposite happens in fact, as they create more demand and this leads to more jobs and wage growth. The problem comes from the fact that work has changed since the 1970s and the new types of jobs don't pay like the ones before. So now you need two people to work when you previously had one.
It should be noted I have nothing against women working, but working should be a voluntary choice that does not involve financial coercion. But in our economy it is a necessity, and since we value GDP so much we measure economic success by creating jobs. We could have all of these caregivers do other jobs. Instead we insist that two people work, and then pay yet another person to take care of their kids, because this causes numbers to go up. Childcare done by parents is hidden undervalued labor in the economy, and is not recognized as valid labor under our GDP obsessed version of capitalism. Because money isn't changing hands and childcare doesnt happen in the form of a "job", it is deemed worthless.
Heck, that's actually a common argument for basic income from a feminist perspective. Basic income rewards hidden and unpaid work (often "womens' work") which is undervalued by the system. It recognizes we all do unpaid labor not valued by the employment system and that we deserve to have it recognized and be rewarded for it. And I'm gonna be honest, the biggest work force reductions under a basic income according to studies that tested for such things came from single moms and housewives. Specifically because they decided instead of work, that they would rather raise kids. And to some extent, isn't that a good thing? Maybe not to neoliberal feminists who think that empowerment comes from a job and climbing the ladder, but as someone who deems freedom and empowerment as coming from independence from careers rather than participation in them, I see things differently.
Discussing where real empowerment comes from
Neoliberal feminists like to act like real empowerment comes from doing "men's work" and getting a job. Being a housewife is often not something valued among feminists, with some being quite critical of those who choose a more traditional path. They adopt the right wing attitudes that true empowerment comes from self sufficiency and self sufficiency comes from a job. If you don't need a man, you are empowered. They are kind of right, but they could do without the jobist nonsense.
I don't adopt the traditional "American" sense that work is dignified. I don't buy into self sufficiency or rugged individualism. As a matter of fact I find employer-employee relationships to be abusive, much like the relationship between an abusive man and his spouse, and I think there's a lot of toxic masculinity and machismo tied to work. From a man's perspective, if you don't want to work, if makes you less of a man. Being a man is about being a provider, it's about being self sufficient, and working. Even feminists adopt such attitudes and seem to balk at the idea of men being "househusbands". I mean, why shouldn't we normalize men doing more feminine stuff if we normalize women doing masculine stuff? Shouldn't equality cut both ways? But that's the key issue with neoliberal feminism. It's about women adopting the "empowering" values of men, which involved...wage slavery.
No, a true sense of empowerment and dignity comes from a basic income and the right to say no. I don't have any issues female empowerment. I have no issues with empowerment in general. My ideology exudes empowerment for all. I mean, my whole ideology is basically about giving people the right to say no that comes from the financial independence basic income provides. Basic income is very "feminist" actually. It does solve the idea that women don't need men to survive. Because women get a basic income and can leave a man at any time, just like they can leave a bad job. It rewards the unseen contributions of women if they choose not to work, by giving them a wage just for being alive. It gives people choices.
I'm going to be honest, I have no problem with women having a job. I have no issue with women not having a job. I have no issue with men working or not working. I want everyone to have a CHOICE. Simply dumping childcare work onto the school system or encouraging subsidized childcare does not solve the larger systemic issues. It's just peak liberal idpol. It solves one problem, but in a way that forces people into the work force.
With basic income, we can go back to the nuclear family, if anyone chooses it. We can have one parent working, and one staying home. And being progressive, it doesn't even need to fit gender roles. Again, why not women breadwinners and househusbands? Why the heck not?! It's the 21st century, we should be so over this toxic masculinity bullcrap when it comes to work! The fact is, it should be up to the parents to figure out. No one should be compulsed to work, but everyone should be free to pursue work if they choose to. I support "real freedom" as Phillipe Van Parijs would say.
But what about the children?
Arguments for universal childcare and preK also come down in some ways to the idea that the outcomes are good for kids. Well, while it's kind of hard to argue against that as it's true, a lot of this argument is kind of tinged with a pro capitalist/pro work mentality too. It basically comes down to giving kids preschool makes them better workers in the future. But should we be simply treating education as a way to create more workers? That's actually kind of what I have against this. I know I'm going to be called very immature here, but when I was a kid, I hated school. I see it as necessary, and I'm not arguing against school, but I'm going to be honest, school kind of exists as a way to indoctrinate the next generation into being good little obedient workers. I mean the only freedom you really have in this society outside of retirement is summer vacations and that 0-5 age range. And now a lot of liberals want to get rid of summer and implement universal preK to "improve student outcomes" and make them more successful. I mean, it works, but it makes them more "successful" in grooming them into a capitalist work environment.
I want to be clear, I'm not against education. Quite the opposite. But I'm anti indoctrination, and I can't see much value in having kids to go school at 3-5 unless you're trying to modify their behavior to make them take more easily to the authoritarian school environment. Which seems to be what some of these arguments come down to. I think school needs to be heavily modified to be about real education and making people into rounded critical thinkers that can think for themselves. But work happy people believe the answer is more hours, more time, have it take up more of a kid's life. At what cost? I think kids should be allowed to be kids to some extent, not be groomed to be subservient "human capital stock" for future employers. Not saying we don't need some indoctrination, but I'd rather work on what we have and push for free college to give adults more educational choices than starting school earlier. Funny how the Biden supporting neolibs think preK is more important than 4 year free college.
Coming full circle
I'm not ripping universal childcare and preK for the sake of ripping it, as I said, I support it, despite it not being a top priority of mine. I think it provides a lot of benefits, would give people the option to work when they would otherwise not be able to, and improves freedom and flexibility while having good outcomes for kids. I'll go further, seeing how we can fund such things with a measly $65 billion a year, we have almost a moral imperative to do it. It would fix a major flaw with the system (childcare being a burden on parents who want to work, while providing better educational outcomes).
However, my arguments have more to do with the way centrist libs tend to think. They still, at the end of the day, adopt the religion of work, or the cult of work. They value maximum productivity. The neoliberal feminist I mentioned here thinks that the system would be fixed if only we provided more schooling for kids so people can work more. It's almost dystopian in their logic to me. Sure, we should be encouraging people to work, if they want to, but we should also respect the right and the freedom not to work. We should be respecting the idea of being able to feed a family with a single person working, rather than needing multiple incomes from work just to survive. And we should see education as more than just a glorified daycare that brainwashes the next generation into being good little wage slaves.
Education is a good thing and we should be investing more into it. But, I would like to get away from strictly a neoliberal framing that boils everything down to hahaha GDP go brrrrr. Neolibs don't see education as a thing to make people smarter, or critical thinkers or more free, they see it as a glorified daycare so we can make numbers go up. And their focus on education seems to be based on that. It alleviates stress from parents so they can go make money and increase productivity, while also raising the next generation to be productive wage slaves too. Everything from a neolib perspective is about making money and maximizing work and productivity, and it just kind of rubs me the wrong way and sickens me.
Womens' liberation is good, education is good. But at the same time, UBI is also good, work life balance is good, kids being able to be kids is good. We should be striving to make a world where people work less, not more, and that's my real problem with all of this. If you want to support these programs, fine, I know I do too. But I tend to adopt a more nuanced perspective of the issues, rather than making arguments based on work and productivity. Which just sounds creepy and dystopian. As someone once told me, we should see the economy as part of our lives, but not the center of our lives. Work and productivity should be about producing things we need, not good in and of themselves. But neolibs support these progressive things as a way to push their right wing ideology and it kind of sickens me.
I support universal childcare and preK, but at the same time, I like to view such things from the perspective of liberating people to live as they want. If you want to work, cool, we got your back, send your kid to daycare while you pursue a career. Universal preK could also be a positive experience for kids. But at the same time, as a system, we kind of force people to work multiple jobs and rather than letting people stay home and raise their kids, we insist on pushing childcare so they can work. What if they don't want to work? We don't care. Work is an unquestioned cult in society and it disgusts me. There is more to life than productivity and work, and this is what I think the neolibs are missing here.
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